Posts made in November, 2013

After a great deal of hue and cry, the US government asked the World IP Organization (WIPO) to come up with a way to regulate internet domain name disputes. After much debate, the idea of a non-profit corporation with a mandate to regulate domain names came about. This corporation was called ICANN: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers.
ICANN has steadily shed any pretense at oversight or external control. The US Department of Commerce has repeatedly given it more power and less oversight. In October, 1999, ICANN approved the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (“The Policy.”) This administrative procedure is mandatory in the case...

There are multiple ways to protect your brand overseas, but the most commonly referenced method is the Madrid Protocol. The United States is a signatory to the Madrid Protocol, an international treaty that covers the mutual recognition of trademarks by its various member nations. In broad scope, it provides a single, relatively convenient way for a trademark holder to obtain protection in multiple nations.
Domestic Registration
The first basis for international protection is receiving a valid trademark in one’s own country. Actually the treaty is slightly more complicated than that, because theoretically one could obtain protection in a foreign country and then...

Under section 45 of the Lanham Act a mark will be abandoned under certain circumstances:
(1) When its use has been discontinued with intent not to resume such use.
There are two parts to this element. “Intent” may be an actual statement, or implied by circumstances. What continues a discontinuation of use is tougher to determine by implication, but we have a bright line rule that three consecutive years of nonuse is prima facie evidence of abandonment. Prima facie is a fancy Latin expression generally taken to mean ‘legally sufficient’ but with the caveat that the presumption of sufficiency can be overcome or rebutted by counter-evidence of sufficient...